SENIOR DUP figures have been engaged in a bizarre exchange of emails over the St Andrew's agreement with the loyalist double murderer, Pastor Kenny McClinton.

The correspondence with MP Jeffrey Donaldson and Ian Paisley jnr has been released exclusively to the Sunday Tribune by McClinton, who was the Loyalist Volunteer Force's point of contact with the international decommissioning body.

McClinton opposes the St Andrew's agreement and believes the DUP are "selling out unionism" by preparing to allow "unrepentant terrorists into government".

The emails disclose that the DUP sees the agreement as a means of smashing the republican movement, with the policing issue as the final nail in the coffin.

In one email, Paisley jnr states: "We couldn't kill them but we can destroy them and their ideology." A republican who accepts the police is no longer a republican, he says.

In his email, Donaldson addresses the convicted loyalist paramilitary as "a brother in the Lord". He says no-one in the DUP likes the prospect of Sinn Fein in government but unionism is winning.

"It is clear Sinn Fein/IRA are under serious internal pressure and may well be incapable of delivering on what is required in terms of support for participation in British democracy, support for a British Police Service and recognition of British Courts and British Justice.

All of this with no prospect of a United Ireland in our lifetime. No wonder their rank and file are deeply concerned.

"These decisions are a million miles away from 1916 and the declaration of a 32-county republic. In short, the IRA has lost the battle for a United Ireland."

Donaldson warns if unionism rejects what's on offer, the British government will proceed with a "deeply green Plan B", including joint sovereignty. He asks the ex-loyalist paramilitary, "Is this what you fought for, Kenny?"

In his email to Ian Paisley jnr, McClinton speaks of anger among lifelong DUP supporters and accuses the leadership of "playing party politics with your groupies, flatterers, and 'YES' men".

"And while we are at it YOUNG MAN, don't you ever in your life question my loyalty or commitment to the country I love! There's more loyalty in my big toe than you have in your entire body!

"Where were whippersnappers like YOU when I was walking the wings of the Hblocks stark naked on the loyalist blanket protest? Where were you then, BOY?

"How dare you throw snide remarks at me. I went out on the 10th May 1977 and shot a man DEAD to take all public transport off the roads of Ulster . . . why? Because I was into shooting people dead? No!

In an attempt to back up your father's less than popular call for a strike.

"Like the rest of you political clowns, you make plenty of TALK but actually do nothing but draw wages. I'm finished with you, and your party."

In his response to Donaldson, McClinton claims ex-loyalist prisoners are "treated like something scraped off the sole of someone's shoe; unemployable; living on social security benefits".

He asks if he went to jail to ensure "DUP politicians and their sons. . . were put into good, high-paid jobs, amass large bank balances over years and years of our poverty, and wined and dined by the so-called 'great and the good' whose company the DUP now seem to covet while ex-Loyalist combatants are treated as scum.

Are these, perhaps, what I 'fought for', Jeffrey?"

He claims the DUP cares only about votes but, at the assembly elections on 7 March, "God willing, the DUP just might get one very nasty surprise. This worm is turning."

McClinton said he released the emails "because country comes before confidentiality". He said he regretted his terrorist involvement, which had ended 30 years ago.

Jeffrey Donaldson said: "Kenny McClinton is someone with a terrorist background who has himself stood for election and failed to achieve a mandate. He is mistaken if he thinks by publishing these emails he will embarrass the DUP. I'm happy to stand by everything I wrote."

Donaldson said McClinton's behaviour relating to the emails was "very unChristian by someone who professes to be a brother in the Lord".

Ian Paisley jnr said: "My emails speak for themselves.

I've no difficulty with their publication . . . indeed, given the person I was dealing with, it's not unexpected. Kenny had no problems begging me to help get him a visa to the US where he wants to 'preach The Word'.

"He has a lot more to lose from the publication of these emails than me. By his actions, he is undermining unionism.

It's Sinn Fein which will be celebrating the actions of Kenny McClinton. If this is the calibre of opposition to the DUP within unionism, people will draw their own conclusions."

EXTRACTS FROM THE McCLINTON/PAISLEY EMAILS

Dear Ian jnr & D.U.P. Party Executive, > Grace and peace unto you and yours in Christ's great and omniscent [sic] Name, my friends; may your hearts and minds be "lled [sic] with thoughts of Him. and the peace He alone can bring. Amen.

You guys in the Executive of the Party need to promptly turn this situation around before it is too late. The Executive need to get together and start to LISTEN to the dissenting voices within your own ranks, for such dissenters are politicians and politicians will not voice dissent unless they are certain that the grassroots DUP electorate are already voicing such complete dissent on the streets of our land!

The argument reportedly posited by your father that the I.R.A. would be virtually destroyed once Sinn Fein give their full support to the PSNI and Policing Board would be a sound agrument IF those signing up to Policing within Northern Ireland, UK, were honourable people, they are not. Their 'long war' is not over - it is merely going into different mode.

Ulster/American Christian Fellowship Hi Kenny once again thanks for your email even though I think your not seeing the entire picture. Look whose under pressure tonight - the traitors in Sinn Fein, traitors to republicanism! Rejoice our enemy is turning against themselves.

Its about time unionists recognised when such division within the camp of the enemy is in no small part down to our strategy of dividing them on the vital matter of law and order. Credit where credit is due! !

Well, well! That takes "bizarre" to new levels. It proves an on-going link between the DUP leadership and a blood-stained member of the UFF murder gang.

Kenny McClinton, a hardliner from the Shankill, progressed from the UDR (which trained him well) into the UDA and then to be a killer for the UFF. He developed a nice line in mailing book-bombs. In May 1977 McClinton shot Harry Bradshaw, a (Protestant) Citybus driver who had failed to toe the line when the UDA/DUP called a transport strike. He was arrested in August 1977, and eventually received two life sentences for murder. In the H-blocks he became a leader of the loyalists' blanket protest, spending extended periods in solitary for violence to prison staff. On 12 August 1979 he suffered a damascene conversion: the H-blocks had similar effects on other loyalist killers, including Torrens Knight, the Greysteel killer, and Billy "King Rat" Wright.

He is now "Dr. C.K. McClinton, BA (Hons), MA, PhD, D. Litt., Pastor of the Ulster/American Christian Fellowship Mission". The only legitimate degree there is an Open University Social Studies BA, earned in the nick. The rest are paper from bible-bashing degree-mills. His ordination is through "Moments of Faith International" of Waco, Texas. Devout souls may wish to send their wallets to him.
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Who he?

Malcolm featured in the columns of "Trinity News", the student weekly of Trinity College, Dublin, in the early 1960s.
He worked in public education. He was a borough councillor and parliamentary candidate. He retired. He was bored. He blogged.